Damian Lillard is the talk of the town after reports suggested he would request a trade from the Portland Trail Blazers in the coming days. This sparked many reactions around the league, and the player didn’t have more choice to address these rumors.
Even after he said he ‘expects’ to wear a Trail Blazers jersey next season, Dame’s words didn’t calm anybody. The All-Star point guard admitted that new head coach Chauncey Billups can be a great addition to them, but they need to do more to compete for an NBA championship.
Talking with reporters, Dame made it clear that this is not enough for the Blazers to aspire to win a title.
Via NBC Sports:
“We’ve made the playoffs all these years in a row. We’re not a bad team, we’re a winning team. We’re in the playoffs every year. We got a great environment. We’re in a great city…it’s a lot of positives but I just think we’ve reached that point where it’s like, ‘ok but it’s not enough.’ Do we actually want to win it all? Is that what we’re shooting for. We got to do things to show that. We got to put action behind that desire to win at that level.”
“If you look at our team as it is going into next season, I don’t see how you can say this is a championship team.”
“My intentions and my heart has always been set on being in a Trail Blazers uniform for my entire career… over time you want to win it all and I want to win it all in a Trail Blazers uniform but we all have to be making strides towards that.”
Lillard knows what he wants: he wants to win. If the team can’t guarantee that he’ll have the right pieces to compete for the championship, it’ll be hard for him to stick around.
Several teams have been linked with the 31-year-old, including the Los Angeles Lakers, Golden State Warriors, and New York Knicks. This summer might be an entertaining one for Dame if the Blazers’ front office doesn’t get to work to assemble a team to compete for the Larry O’Brien trophy.
